John Burke – New Tales Of Unease

These tales are not about ghosts: not really, not ghosts pure and simple. They are not crime stories, or gruesome stories: well …. not All of them. They tell of ordinary people in an everyday world, people you may know, people you may recognize.

Elizabeth Walter – The Hollies And The Ivy: Gus and Judith Pentecost move into The Hollies, previously owned by old Mrs. Dyer whose husband vanished, presumed murdered by wife although no body was ever recovered. From the first, Gus fights a losing battle versus the unruly ivy which clings to the walls and taps on the windows at night. Come Christmas, and they’re entombed by the fist-thick roots. Another cracker for the Vegetation! thread.

Miles Tripp – Commuter: For forty years, Sidney Hinds reflects, he’s commuted to his dull job analysing unemployment figures before returning home to his joyless marriage. But today the station is deserted, the train doesn’t arrive, and so he has no option but to return home and be nagged by Mabel for getting “under her feet” …. just as he has every day for years since he took an axe to her. Today, in a rare moment of clarity, Sidney realises he’s no reason to stay at the gloomy bungalow any longer, so he has a last hack at the corpse, packs some provisions and sets up camp in the waiting room of the obsolete station. When two youths break in, he defends his property entirely oblivious to the express train belting along the rails …

Stephen Meadows – It Had Happened Before: Short-short. Another bitter marriage with every day, every excuse for a conversation a repetition of one that has gone before. Husband takes out the iron and creeps up on wife as she’s watching TV.

Philip Evans – Tale-Telling: Contract killer in the confessional box. The previous night he committed his first murder for non-financial gain, shooting a beautiful woman he’d just picked up and made love to, Rosa Selvaggio, and he can’t explain why. He’s even more at a loss as to why she merely laughed as bullet after bullet sank into her without having any effect whatsoever. She appears behind her killer in the box, as does the Priest. He’s mighty odd, too.